Bryan Cowgill, who has died aged 81, was at various times a pioneering sports broadcaster, the controller of BBC1 and the managing director of Thames Television. A buccaneer, born out of his time, he was also an unsettling reminder that occupying media executive hot seats can be both short and brutish. The quarterdeck of a pirate schooner would have suited his face and also his managerial style. According to a colleague, “his verbal lashings could reduce strong men to tears”. As BBC head of sport, he would push aside the director of a live sports relay and take over when coverage was not going to his liking. A former copy boy on the Lancashire Evening Post, “Ginger” Cowgill was an oddity among the BBC’s university-educated ranks when he was promoted to take charge of BBC1. “He got on at the BBC,” said one competitor ruefully, “because at first everyone thought he was thick. But in fact he was busy making his way up the ladder.”

His eight-year reign at Thames ended in near-farce when he entered into secret negotiations to buy the American soap Dallas, long a BBC preserve, for £55,000 an episode against the BBC’s £29,000. The deal infuriated not only his former colleagues at the BBC but also his peers at ITV, who accused Thames of breaking a gentleman’s agreement not to poach the other side’s bought-in programmes. They refused to show the series.

Carpeted by his own directors and the Independent Broadcasting Authority, Cowgill was forced to resign. He complained bitterly about “twits who did not understand the free market”, but with a pay-off said to be about £400,000. He used some of it to buy a holiday home in Spain which he called Southfork.

– The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph